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History

1960

cave discovered by Dale Green.

2003

cave surveyed by the Timpanogos Grotto.

2004

two cave accidents around Labor Day.

2006

cave closed by the local chapter of the NSS, open for preebooked groups under certain conditions.

NOV-2009

visitor dies in cave accident.

DEC-2009

cave sealed.

Description

To make it clear: nobody from showcaves.com ever
visited this cave.
But its impact is rather impressive to us.
Hundreds of people find this page every month, by a search engine.
If all this people really visit the cave, and probably some more without web
access, the number of visitors would mean a fortune to every commercial cave
manager.

A website about this cave - see the first link below - tells something about
this cave which sounds pretty familiar to us.
Many western countries have this kind of caves.
Narrow, uninteresting and overcrowded holes, popular torture instrument for
bored kids.
Where most of the caves are closed to protect nature, the few open caves,
especially if they offer some sportive challenge, become extremely popular.
The results of this popularity are well known:
The air becomes bad, on weekends all visitors have to queue, the floor becomes
polished, and speleothems evaporate.

In Germany this caves are called Opferhöhle (sacrifice cave),
because they are sacrificed to the unstoppable urge to exercise some spelunking.
Obviously some people see in caves a way to do sports and have fun ignoring all
environmental damages they cause.
To protect the other caves, certain caves are offered as a bait.

We listed this place for completeness sake, we do not want to promote it.
But it seems to be mostly harmless.
Just don't get stuck and use your brain.
To find it, just follow the treck of spelunkers...

2006 Update

We left the original cave description unchanged, and it seems our original
resentment was justified.
The cave was visited by an increasing number of visitors, up to 5,000 every
year.
Finally on the Labor Day weekend in 2004, two vistors had to be rescued from the
cave.

The owner of the land, the State of Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands
Administration (SITLA) was not willing to keep the cave open, because of the
potential damage and financial risk.
They asked various groups including BYU, Utah Valley State College and the Boy
Scouts of America to lease the land.
But this lease would have included the requirement to build a gate, maintain the
land and carry a $1 million insurance policy.
Another accident in a nearby cave, where four people died in a narrow underwater
tunnel in August 2005, stopped all negotiations.

Now Timpanogos Grotto, the local chapter of the NSS, signed an agreement with
SITLA.
They close the cave and allow access only to groups which submit an access
request form at least one week before the planned trip and follow the strict
safety rules.
The rules are explained on their website in detail, and make sense to us.
Hopefully this will prevent further accidents in the cave.

2009 Update

And yet another part of our original cave description has become nasty reality.
We described it as a narrow torture instrument and recommended not to
get stuck.
This is what happened in November 2009 to a caver with some experience.
He got stuck 100m deep into the wormhole, unfortunately it was upside down.
Rescuers were not able to get him out, so he died after only 24 hours because of
the unnatural posture.
Obviously, if they were not able to get him out while he was alive and
supporting, they have no chance now after he is dead.
At least not without using a huge knife or saw.
It seems they decided to do it the other possible way: close the cave and wait
some years, then go in with a mask and a big bag.
The SITLA representatives have decided to close the cave forever, which is
heavily criticised by the cavers of the local grotto, which managed the cave for
three years now.

So we updated the page.
After years of cave vandalism mis-named caving by its supporters, the cave is
finally closed.
And they even left some food for the troglobionts.

We do not believe it will really be closed forever.
Eternity is somewhat around five years.
There is obviously a need for such a spot and there will be pressure to reopen
it.
Actually it would be pretty hard to close every spot where someone has died
forever, there would be no place to live left pretty soon.